46 AN AUSTRALIAN STUDY OF AMERICAN FORESTRY. 
The sale of forest products not specifically covered by regulation is 
conducted by the forest supervisor. 
The development of timber sale policies in Australia lies along the lines 
adopted by the United States of America Forest Service, and already initiated 
in Queensland. 
Cutting on other areas than State forests should be encouraged, pending 
establishment of a sales and silvicultural system on the State forests. 
Cuaprter III. 
MODERN TIMBER GETTING AND MANUFACTURE. 
SCIENTIFIC POWER LOGGING. 
Despite high freight charges, high duty, and somewhat higher wages, 
America is able to produce timber so cheaply as to be in a position to compete 
in Australia with the home product. 
‘The average mill price for:all kinds of timber in America in 1912 was 
6s. 4d. per 100 feet, while Oregon was only 4s. 10d.! In Australia, the average 
price is between two and three times this amount. 
My impression before visiting America was that floatable woods and 
permanent streams were the secret of this cheapness of production. 
I found that America was abandoning very largely the method of water 
transport in favour of railway carriage. 
I saw the Columbia River in a flooded state with the banks clogged with 
stranded logs which it would never pay to extricate; only odd logs were 
floating down stream. I was told that the actual loss in log scale from 
sunken, stranded, and damaged timber varied from 10 per cent. to as high 
as 40 per cent. of the logs despatched. 
The secret of cheap timber lay actually in the adoption of scientific power 
logging, now universally employed in America. The logging engineer is an 
outstanding figure in the lumber industry, and logging engineering has become 
a distinct profession. 
America had originally about 850,000,000 acres of forest and approxi- 
mately 5,200,000,000,000 feet of timber. The stand per acre was heavy. 
Clean cutting was largely adopted. There were no girth restrictions. Lumber 
companies possessed large timber holdings. 
These conditions made possible a gigantic scale of timber exploitation, 
and induced the development of power logging. 
Such ideal conditions for power logging are infrequent in Australia; 
nevertheless, timber-getting methods are capable of very great improvement, 
and much can be done to cheapen timber production, and by consequence 
to increase royalty values for the State. 
The basis of the American logging system is the logging railroad. 
_ Pole roads with animals as draft power were the first adopted owing to 
their cheapness and low cost of maintenance. They were primitive devices 
and are now obsolete. 
Stringer roads having sawn wood or steel rails, and possessing larger 
capacity succeeded the pole roads. 
